FLYING IN A HELICOPTER: FlyBama Night Time Flight at Greater Gulf State Fair, Mobile, AL

(Filmed on 11-3-2024) An inaugural thing for FlyBama and the Greater Gulf State Fair in Mobile, AL this year as they began offering a Helicopter Flight within a 2-mile orbit over the fairgrounds for $35, which lasts about 2-minutes. I had the opportunity to take a quick orbit around the Mobile Fairgrounds and take my Sony Handycam on board with me for nice video. This is my 4th helicopter tour on record, 2014 over St. Louis, 2016 over Orlando, 2021 over Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, and now a flight in West Mobile.

While in the helicopter, you can see the radio frequency tuned at 118.3, the tower frequency at the nearby Mobile Regional Airport. The West Mobile area is about 200 feet above sea level. As we take-off, we begin climbing at about 500-700 FPM, and stay around 200-300 max ground level altitude for a minute. We take a right bank and fly over the parking lot, as we parallel Zeigler Road, heading East-bound. At this point, you can see the flashing red beacon far off in the distance, that's the red beacon you see when you're in Downtown Mobile looking at the flashing red light on the RSA Tower. Downtown Mobile is about 10 miles away in the air, while you have to drive at least 5 more miles to get down there in your vehicle. Then we take the 180-degree turn back on the North end and head West-bound, where you can see the fairgrounds on your left-side. While making the final circle around the West side of the fair's midway, you can see the white street lights of Schillinger Road nearby. The white lights to the right of the street lights is one of the runways at the Airport. And then we come back down to land on the fairgrounds. To close out the video, one of the managers was nice enough to welcome me inside the gates to capture a nice shot of the landing from behind the tail, but off to the side so that I remained in a safe distance from it.

In conclusion for this experience, the flight lasted about 90 seconds, so I had to really focus in hard for these 90 seconds to capture this video on my flight, because flying is always too fast to take everything in, but it was 90 seconds with a lot going on and it was a nice 90 seconds to make a video to remember. The manager who took me out to get the last shot said this was their first year coming out to our local fairs, but they will be back here next year. FlyBama is in Foley at OWA and they offer helicopter tours around OWA and Foley. Enjoy this night time helicopter flight around the Mobile Fairgrounds at the 2024 Greater Gulf State Fair here in West Mobile.